


good intentions (I can't lie)

by transit (dollyeo)



Series: Actor/Manager AU [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Showbusiness, Famous Junhui, Genderbending, Minor Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Non-famous Jihoon, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-15 02:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14149770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyeo/pseuds/transit
Summary: If anyone asks Jihoon, the beginning was all wrong, the middle even more complicated, and the future unlikely to be anythingbuta crappy ending.He's a realist, not a fatalist. There's a difference, even if heiskinda, maybe, a little bit but not really head-over-heels in love with Wen Junhui.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelaziesthufflepuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelaziesthufflepuff/gifts).



> hongwen, I Tried Very Hard. I'm so sorry for butchering their personalities orz

Jihoon likes to think of himself as a cool kind of guy. Not _cool_ cool the way Soonyoung insists her idol oppa of the month is (never mind that she’s, like, at least half a decade older than half of the idols are, and that her tastes have been as flexible and retractable as a revolving door for as long as he can remember), but he’s a pretty chill person all around, managing to keep his calm and composure through hell, high water, and Soonyoung screaming his ears off and threatening to cut off the circulation in his arms every time he gets dragged around to a guerilla concert with her. He’s got this whole zen thing down to pat.

It kind of helps that his resting bitch face is good enough to mask any surprises, even if Soonyoung thinks he just looks likes a particularly grumpy cat getting dragged to the vet on a bad day. Then again, Soonyoung’s seen him in his bedwetting days and lived through the agonizing stage of puberty, so he can’t really expect her to know any better. Watching someone bemoan every new pimple and stare in front of the mirror, willing facial hair to magically appear in the form of stubble, is bound to make anyone immune. She doesn’t count, though all those times she’s cooed at him in public continue to make him regret his decision of even referring her to his agency. (Pinching his cheek in front of a fresh-faced starlet or a rookie singer to try to distract them from vomiting out their guts from stage fright? _Not_ helping at all.)

Still, he likes to think he’s managed to keep a firm hold on his image. Jihoon’s _intimidating_ , and he doesn’t let a lot of people close. Even when he’s armed with little more than a hairbrush in one hand and a bottle of concealer in the other, he tries to keep his conversations with celebrities as short and curt as possible, and stall their attempts at getting to know him better under the guise of needing to get a stylist to blow dry their hair. He’s got a reputation to uphold in the green room, and all the interns and newbies quailing under his scowl have spread his notoriety from the halls of SBS to MBC, hushed whispers reeking simultaneously of envy and reverence all at once.

(No matter what anyone says, he’s not a bitch. He’s _professional_ , that’s all.)

Which is why, after nearly half a decade in the industry, he can’t quite explain how, exactly, he’s apparently living out a terrible primetime drama where he’s the unwitting recipient of someone’s affections.

He takes a long look at the box of cupcakes perched precariously next to his make-up kit (pastel-pink, 60% icing, _expensive as fuck_ ) and shakes his head at the note that says, _I hope this sweetens your day the way your cute smile does mine ♥_. It’s unsigned, but it doesn’t take much to put two and two together about who left him the gift. There’s only one person lacking enough sense and self-preservation to call him cute, and that person’s on set fluttering her lashes at Kim Mingyu and waiting for him to bestow her with a soft and chaste kiss.

With a grim sigh, he puts the note down on top of his make-up kit, meaning to throw it away for later. He looks down at the desserts, feeling his mouth water with hunger even as he bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to bruise.

“Fuck,” says Jihoon. “Now I’m gonna have to get her something for White Day.”

 

 

It's not that Jihoon hates Junhui.

If there's anything to call what he feels for her, it's far from hate. Attachment is probably a more apt term for it considering they've worked in so many projects together before that seeing her in an after-party or a drinking session with the rest of the staff doesn't make him freeze up as much as he used to the first few times, but that feels a little too prosaic, if not an outright lie.

He'd have to be either blind or ass over tits for someone else (or a combination of both, looking at you, Jeon Wonwoo) not to have the teensiest, _tiniest_ crush on her. He's verbally constipated, not an idiot. Being exposed to so many celebrities with an obsession for skin care and a tacit acceptance -- if not expectation -- of going under the knife just for the sake of upholding a standard hasn't exactly numbed him from finding people attractive. It's just that maybe if he and Junhui had met under different circumstances, then maybe he could have valiantly kept his chin up and ignored all the fluttering feelings in his stomach threatening to make him dry-heave in humiliation and embarrassment.

The first few times he'd met her face-to-face, he'd told himself, again and again, that it was just a fleeting thing, easy to forget in the face of a sea of beautiful people; when they said goodbye after that project, he'd shaken her hand, unable to look her in the eye as he tried to keep his own fingers from trembling too much. If she noticed, she never said.

Her hands were rougher than he'd thought they'd be. It's one of the things about her that lingers in his mind, the reality as heavy as the weight of her hand in his.

No, Jihoon doesn't hate Junhui. He just hates all the complicated feelings that seem to come hand-in-hand with coming to terms with his budding feelings for her, and he _hates_ that it seems to get worse as the years pass. Like some twisted form of karma, he keeps running into her at work, and while it just makes Junhui beam at him, pleased and surprised, he knows from the smirk on Soonyoung's face that it's far from coincidence.

(“I’m so glad I’m working with you again, Jihoon-sshi,” Junhui had said, in slow, halting Korean. Her smile was unsure but gentle, like she was coaxing a terrified animal to eat out of her palm, and it made her look so much younger than her face betrayed, the relief and pleasure so palpable Jihoon wanted to clench his fingers into a fist. “You remind me so much of someone I know back home.”

“A boyfriend?” He asked, mouth dry. He didn’t know how he found it in himself to voice it aloud, then, and her smile turned softer.

“My— well— something like a little brother," she said, ducking her head to hide her grin. “We were very close.”

“Oh,” he said, flatly. His hands fell at his sides, limp and uncooperative. “I see.”

What was he supposed to say to that?)

Liking someone out of your league hurts like a bitch, even worse when everyone seems to know it but her. And no matter how many times he’d tried to prepare himself for it—how he’d tried to steel himself whenever he realized what he was getting himself into—it didn’t matter. He was trapped.

 

 

Fifteen minutes and a furtive attempt to look for a discreet hiding spot to eat his spoils of war (bribery, humiliation, scraps, what have you) later, Soonyoung peeks into the supply closet on the seventh floor without knocking and squints at Jihoon's guilt-stricken face, cheek frosted with icing and lips covered in sugar and crumbs. It feels vaguely like he's a teenager all again and trying to hide his raging hard-on after he'd been looking at softcore porn in his laptop and gotten caught with a hand down his shorts by Soonyoung, the annoying neighbor's kid with no sense of privacy whatsoever. Even the way Soonyoung's mouth stretches out into a smirk makes the dread in his stomach churn, as familiar as when she'd brought her own external hard drive over the next day and started showing him the wonders of gravure models and the seedier side of the entertainment industry. What a pervert.

“Oooh,” says Soonyoung, waggling her eyebrows at him. “Another gift from your secret admirer?”

Jihoon coughs, trying to hide how he nearly chokes on a bite of the cupcake by wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s not a secret admirer,” says Jihoon. “Shut up.”

“Right,” says Soonyoung. She shuts the door behind her and crawls closer to swipe a cupcake from the box on his lap, completely remorseless as she starts licking at the frosting. “I guess it’s not so much a secret if there’s only _one_ person blind enough to think you’re cute.”

Wen Junhui also thinks he’s as harmless as a woodland animal even if he keeps staring at her with dead eyes as she asks him to touch up her makeup, so he doesn’t exactly trust her powers of judgment. No sense of self-preservation, that one, always keeping her eyelids firmly shut and her heart-shaped mouth slightly open even as the paralyzing realization of how easy it would be to just _kiss her_ crosses his mind. Yeah, uh, no. He’s not gonna attack her just to fulfill his own baser fantasies. She doesn’t deserve creeps hanging around her, _ever_.

The thought is sobering, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. He takes another bite from his own cupcake, but it tastes stale.

“You mean, your mother?” He snarks back instead. It’s always easier to distract himself with sarcasm, biting at turns. He takes another bite, more vicious this time, and ends up dropping crumbs all over his shirt.

Soonyoung wrinkles her nose at him, scrunching it up in a way she probably picked up from Wonwoo (even if she’d rather sit her ass down in front of hundreds of pages of paperwork than admit that he’s rubbing off on her in more ways than one). “My mom also thinks Wonwoo’s practically husband material, so that’s not as insulting to me as you think it is,” she counters. “To _you_ , on the other hand—”

“First you steal from me, and then you badmouth me, the woman who gave birth to you, and the main source of your livelihood in one go,” says Jihoon. “Don’t you have interns to boss around for coffee runs or producers to argue with? Why can’t you go and bother someone else instead?”

“But it’s so fun annoying you, Jihoonie,” Soonyoung coos, leaning in to give him a wet, smacking kiss to his brow that has him scowling at her. “And anyway, Jisoo-oppa’s busy talking to one of the writers and Wonwoo wouldn’t stop bugging me about helping him memorize his script the whole time instead of going over it with Junhui. It’s annoying.” Ah. No wonder. Left without her latest favorite distraction and in the company of the _one_ man Soonyoung’s never professed an intense need to fawn over and marry, it’s no wonder Jihoon’s her next unwitting victim.

Too bad for Wonwoo, though. Not that Jihoon’s actively endorsing the idea of Soonyoung waking up one day and thinking that maybe she should move on from chasing after idols and other people’s managers to entertaining the possibility of hooking up with Wonwoo. Some day, she’ll probably realize that Wonwoo’s insistence at sticking to her side has less to do with actively trying to sabotage her chances of having a good day and more to do with his inability to spit anything out and _not_ resort to pigtail pulling to express his affection, but until then, Jihoon’s not gonna open his mouth if he can help it. He’s got a bet riding on this. No one is sleeping with any liabilities on _his_ watch.

(Besides, he kinda likes Wonwoo. He doesn’t want him to get strangled by Soonyoung’s dad anytime soon, especially if he ends up actually knocking her up before a wedding even happens. The level of overprotection her dad has for his daughters is offset only by her mother’s intense need to see her children’s offspring before she hits her late sixties. Jihoon’s only safe from his suspicions if only because Soonyoung’s dad probably thinks he’s an even bigger prude than his own kids. Which. Technically, he is. It’s kinda hard not to be, especially when Soonyoung’s the one that keeps reading BL scanlations on the train without shame.)

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted some peace and quiet?”

“You already get enough on your days off,” Soonyoung scoffs, mouth full of the last of her cupcake and still managing to get less crumbs all over her lap than Jihoon. “If I didn’t drag you out half the time, you’d probably be sleeping the entire day away and not eating.”

“Days off are meant for rest, _not_ for awkwardly third-wheeling just so no one thinks you having dinner alone with Wonwoo is a scandal waiting to happen.”

“You get free food out of it! Besides, I never hear you complaining after you stuff your face with Wagyu beef!”

“Stop having dinner on the company’s tab!”

“Wonwoo pays for everything, not me.”

“That makes it even worse,” says Jihoon, glumly. “One day, your mom is gonna hear about this, and then she’s gonna start planning our non-existent wedding just because you keep needing someone to act as a buffer for all your unresolved tension.”

“I’m more worried about Dispatch than my mom.”

“Oh god,” says Jihoon. “Don’t remind me. I’m still trying to recover from the tabloids mistaking me for a male escort after you ditched us to go to the bathroom last month.”

“Well, they think Wonwoo’s hooking up with more people than his left hand, so the rumor mill’s not exactly a reliable source of information,” says Soonyoung, loftily, ignoring Jihoon’s pained squawk and his attempts to cover his ears from too much information. She sucks at her fingers, trying to chase the aftertaste of sugar with her tongue, indifferent as ever. “Besides, if you didn’t keep hiding in closets and turning your nose up at Junhui’s advances, no one would ever think we were together.”

“What advances,” says Jihoon, flatly. “There are no advances.” Soonyoung raises an eyebrow at the box of cupcakes, wrappers and demolished crumbs left in its wake. Jihoon groans. “Fuck off.”

“It tasted homemade and full of her love,” Soonyoung sighs happily, touching her chest. “If I were you, I’d have jumped her a long time ago.”

“Good thing I’m not you, then,” says Jihoon. He storms out of the closet, the box awkwardly clutched to his chest, and bumps into a passing staff member on his way out. “Besides, Jisoo-hyung will _kill_ me if anything happens to his charge.”

“You’ll thank me when you’re married!” Soonyoung hollers after him.

“Not if I’m dead by the time hyung gets his hands on me!” Jihoon’s ears burn the entire time he stalks away from her, even as her cackling follows him as she tries to keep up with his strides.

Soonyoung’s definitely the fucking worst.

 

 

Soonyoung makes a beeline to the snack table under the guise of getting instant coffee for Wonwoo (really, she’s not fooling anyone by determinedly zooming in on Hong Jisoo inspecting a glazed doughnut with tired eyes) and abandons Jihoon to Wonwoo’s disapproving frown. Jihoon has half the mind to make a snarky comment about misplaced jealousy and the relative inefficacy of Wonwoo’s pining face when translated to real life, but Wonwoo can be pretty prickly and destructive when he feels like he’s being attacked, so Jihoon just rolls his eyes and starts touching up his makeup if only to spare them the small talk.

Unfortunately, Wonwoo’s feeling particularly chatty today, and no amount of Jihoon channeling his best _talk to me and I’ll rip your head off_ vibes can deter a man as stubborn as Wonwoo when he has a mission. (His tenacity is probably half of the reason he’s even in love with Soonyoung. That, or masochism. There’s really no accounting for taste.)

“Had a good break?” Wonwoo asks, tipping his chin up obediently and letting Jihoon examine his face.

“Terrible,” says Jihoon, picking up eyeliner if only to use the sensation of a sharp, pointy object near Wonwoo’s eyeballs as a threat in case he starts getting mouthy. Wonwoo arches an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t flinch.

“It would actually help if you ate normal food instead of snacking all the time, you know,” Wonwoo grouses. “Just when I’m on a diet, asshole.”

“What makes you think I even ate anything?” Jihoon asks, slowly. He resists the urge to look over at Junhui on the other side of the room, chatting with her pregnant stylist in rapid-fire dialect and maybe (definitely) not talking about him _at all_. The hyperawareness is killing him.

“You have frosting on your chin.” Jihoon turns his head to check his reflection in the mirror and rubs at his skin with a scowl. “Also, a little birdie told me someone left you a gift on your desk.”

Jihoon can feel his eyebrow twitch, but he resists the urge to accidentally poke Wonwoo in the eye with the tip of his pen. “What about you? Did you get around to actually memorizing the rest of your lines?”

“Already memorized them last week,” says Wonwoo, shameless as ever. He closes his eyes. “Why’d you ask?”

“Soonyoung said you wanted to go over your lines with her.”

“Oh. That.” Wonwoo clears his throat. “I was only pretending so she’d do the kiss scene with me.”

“You realize that’s bordering sexual harassment, right?”

“I wasn’t gonna actually _kiss_ her,” says Wonwoo, sulking. “Not if she didn’t want to.”

Wonwoo scrunches up his nose and scratches at his upper lip with his index finger, smudging bits of his lipstick off. Sometimes, Jihoon commiserates with Soonyoung’s feelings of wanting to throw something at Wonwoo when he’s acting like a brat. He’s not getting paid enough for this, he thinks as he looks for lipliner in his kit. He sighs.

“You can’t use your acting skills on someone who can’t tell when you’re not faking it.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes. “It’s ironic that you, of all people, would be telling me this.”

“Jihoon, I know Wonwoo’s full of shit, but please stop looking like you’re about to commit murder,” Soonyoung butts in, cups of instant coffee in both hands and looking less than pleased that she’s had to depart from the view the buffet gives her. She hands Wonwoo one of the cups. “Here, maybe if you get some caffeine into your bloodstream, you’ll be less cranky.”

Wonwoo sniffs at the contents of the cup. “Why is this coffee cold?”

“Oops, that was mine,” she says, reaching out to retrieve it. “I already drank from it. This one’s the fresh cup.”

“It’s fine,” says Wonwoo, face blank. Jihoon watches him line the rim of the cup marked faintly with lipstick to his own mouth, right where Soonyoung’s lips might have lingered. The indirect kiss makes him wanna roll his eyes and puke, but he tries to hide his frown by pretending to look for his makeup palette. “At least I’m sure this one won’t be poisoned.”

Clearly all those romance dramas have done nothing to polish Wonwoo’s flirtation skills, but Soonyoung doesn’t look too peeved. If anything, she just pats the top of his head with her free hand, messing his hair up.

“Keep joking like that and maybe I’ll think about it next time,” Soonyoung warns. She turns to Jihoon, nudging his shoulder conspiratorially even as he lets out an irritated huff when she nearly knocks over his palette. “I’ve already found the perfect hiding place to stash a body.”

“You are _not_ dragging corpses into my supply closet.”

“It’s the broadcasting station’s closet, not yours.”

“ _No corpses_ ,” Jihoon insists. “ _None_.”

“After all that time we spent together bonding and salivating over Junhui’s luscious, sumptuous—”

“ _Soonyoung_!”

“— _baked goods_ , Jihoon, what did you think I was gonna say?" Soonyoung leers at him, hiding her smirk behind her coffee. Forget wanting to throw things at Wonwoo; Soonyoung’s equally annoying. No wonder they’re perfect for each other. They’re a match made in hell. “ _Pervert_.”

Wonwoo’s brows are furrowed together, concerned, if not suspicious. “What were you guys doing in a closet together?” Wonwoo asks.

“It’s symbolic,” says Soonyoung, sagely. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Jihoon gives up on even attempting to explain himself and starts packing up, intent on getting as far away from those two as possible. His ears prick towards the sound of Junhui’s laughter in the background, but he sucks in a breath and _resists_ giving in.

He can’t quite stop himself from peeking at her out of the corner of his eye, though. It’s just his luck that she takes that moment to look at him, too, and she smiles when she notices him staring back— a little shy, a little confused, but so bright he almost wants to return the smile with his own.

His ears. They feel like they’re burning.

It’s always hard to look her in the eye.

 

 

A list of reasons why he blames all of his suffering on Kwon Soonyoung:

  * When they were four years old, Soonyoung and her older sister used to terrorize him into being their life-sized doll for their own amusement. Their youngest brother hadn’t been born then, and Jihoon had the misfortune of being younger and smaller than any of the other neighborhood brats, so the grown-ups just thought it was cute whenever Minkyung and Soonyoung roped him into playing dress-up and suffering through their shitty attempts at making him look pretty. The baby pictures still lived in their photo albums to this day, blackmail fodder that was only unleashed to the world when Soonyoung sold him out for dinner and a few signed albums from her anonymous benefactor. From the soppy, endearing looks Junhui kept giving him weeks after, he had a sneaking suspicion that maybe it wasn’t as anonymous as Soonyoung claimed. 

“Besides,” Soonyoung said, rummaging through his free sample kits from Wonwoo’s latest brand endorsement, “you should be thanking us we actually gave you inspiration for your future career path.”

“I’m not a stylist,” Jihoon snapped back, face still flaming from Junhui’s cooing. Masculinity, what was that, even. “And you used face paint and glitter on me, _not_ makeup.”

“Well, at least we taught you what _not_ to do,” Soonyoung shrugged. “Now come here and help me pick stuff out for Minkyung’s birthday.”

  * Growing up, he’d been conditioned to watch shoujo anime more than sentai and shounen that by the time Soonyoung started gravitating towards Bleach, Gintama and One Piece, Jihoon had been stuck in the purgatory of magical girl hell and unable to get out. 

Looking back at his teenage crushes, Mami Tomoe ranked very high on his list, though it had less to do with the abundance of hentai manga (“Keep telling yourself that,” Soonyoung snorted) and more to do with a sick fascination for how cool her guns were (“Are you _listening_ to yourself?”) and the injustice of her screen time and. Well. Life in general.

“I’m marrying Hyesung-oppa when I grow up,” fourteen-year-old Soonyoung declared in front of the TV, starry-eyed and clutching at her fluttering heart.

“Well,” Jihoon decided, after a beat, “I’m marrying Mami.”

Soonyoung rolled her eyes. “Homura’s better.”

_Homura’s fucking crazy and you have no taste_ , Jihoon wanted to say then, but she’d tuned him out already, attention back on the screen.

She always did go for the single-minded, obsessive ones. He's really worried about who she’d end up marrying in the future.

  * In high school, she’d been knee-deep in the nsfw side of cosplay hell and kept spamming his instant messenger with her favorite pictures. _Look at this goddess_ , she moaned in between keysmashing and capslock with every LQ image of a Mami Tomoe cosplayer from China. _If I had boobs like that, do you think I’d have a better chance at attracting anyone from JYPE?_

_If you had boobs like that, you probably wouldn’t stop touching yourself_ , Jihoon meant to say, except he’d made the fatal mistake of actually downloading the series of sexy, gravure-like pictures straight out of a NEET’s waking wet dream and promptly fell in love.

And lust. But mostly love. Somewhere in between the first blush of infatuation and the coiling of his stomach that came with his non-2D sexual awakening, he realized: he had it bad, and it was all Soonyoung’s fault for introducing him to _MoonTenshi64_ ’s dark, smoldering eyes, glossy, heart-shaped lips and curves that made him frantically make anon mixtapes and FSTs dedicated to her beauty, damn it. So many sheets soiled and tissues thrown in the trash, and all because he couldn’t get a pretty face with a cute wink and pout in gif form out of his mind.

  * And if he thinks about it— really thinks about it— it’s all her fucking fault he met the subject of his teenage masturbation fodder how many years later, if only because she’d harassed him into sub-ing for Wonwoo’s usual makeup artist for his first project with an emerging foreign starlet looking to make it big in Seoul. 

“Jihoonie,” Soonyoung simpered, shit-eating grin on her face, eyes twinkling because she knew, _she fucking knew_ , “meet Wonwoo’s new co-star, Jun!”

“Oh,” Wen Junhui— _Moon fucking Tenshi 64_ — had said, blinking down at him with a smile not unlike the ones permanently seared into his brain in his childhood bedroom, “is this your little brother, Soonyoung-sshi?”

Funny, how she’d thought he was a high schooler and the mistaken assumption had made him regress to the humiliating feeling of want all over again. She always knew how to make him wish the earth would just swallow him up.




 

 

“Let me get this straight. Wen Junhui, your sexy cosplay fantasy, is your first love—”

“ _Was_.”

“— who just so happens to be absurdly famous and works with you with increasing frequency, all while she’s sucking face with the guy who’s been after Soonyoung for a _really_ long time. Am I getting this right?”

Jihoon grunts, half in assent, half not.

“Congratulations,” says Choi Seungcheol, after he’s recovered from his laughing fit long enough to compose himself. “Your life is officially a makjang drama. I’d write a script for you, but I honestly have no idea how this is gonna play out.”

Seungcheol’s one of the writers for a variety show Wonwoo and some other talents from their agency had been on when Yoon Jeonghan was still the MC a couple of years ago. They’ve known each other as far back as uni and have kept in touch since then, so it’s not too much of a hardship for Jihoon to drag him out under the pretense of dinner, but with the full intent of complaining about life and drinking the ever-present issue of being caught under Wen Junhui’s thumb away without the danger of doing reckless, stupid things.

(If he’d gone drinking with just Soonyoung, she’d be wasted after three shots and drunk-dialing everyone on her phone, up to and including Junhui. Jihoon’s not taking the risk of Soonyoung opening her damn mouth and exposing him to further embarrassment if he can help it. Just. _No_.)

“I’m so glad I’ve inspired your creative juices enough to detract you from my suffering,” says Jihoon, snidely. “If you ever wind up in a complicated relationship, I’ll be laughing at you the entire time.”

“Relax,” says Seungcheol, brushing his sarcasm off. “It’s not like she knows, right?”

“The problem is I can’t even look at her without feeling like I’m in high school again and horny all the damn time,” Jihoon grouses, tracing the rim of his shot glass with an unsteady finger. He rakes his other hand through his hair in frustration. “And now she’s doing all these cute things for me because she says I remind her of her little brother.” Sort of. She’s never really said what exactly _Hao Hao_ was to her, but Jihoon’s a natural cynic and he’s already plotted out Junhui’s hypothetical wedding and two kids with whoever Hao Hao is.

“Ouch,” says Seungcheol, patting his back in sympathy. “I’m guessing the guilt is making you consider celibacy now?”

“No,” Jihoon despairs. He bangs his head against the surface of the table, barely pillowed by his arm. “I still wanna fuck her.”

“You and thousands of guys on the Internet, I bet,” Seungcheol mutters. “Hey, at least you have a fighting chance, right? The fact that she’s even giving you stuff means she’s definitely interested.”

“Maybe she thinks I’m just a kid,” Jihoon broods.

“Oh god, is this feeding into your noona kink again? Do I need to remind you how badly the last crush you had on an older woman ended?”

It ended with lots of tears, lots of chocolate, and Soonyoung and Seungcheol pretending not to look every time Jihoon sobbed into a tissue as they watched My Sassy Girl for the nth time after Jihoon’s one-sided love ended in flames and a wedding in spring. Nursing a crush on someone taken sucked ass, but it did wonders to help Jihoon channel his creativity into yet another curated playlist.

“We’re the same age,” says Jihoon, scowling.

“And yet, you still manage to act emotionally constipated either way,” says Seungcheol. “For a closet romantic, you’re not very good at translating it to real life, Jihoonie.”

That’s the thing, though. Jihoon knows the difference between reality and fiction, and _Junhui_ knows it keenly, too. He can’t misinterpret the slightest inch she gives him and takes a mile in turn. Guys like him, they just don’t _get_ girls like her, and it’s already absurd enough that he’s even entertaining the notion that she might feel something a little more than fondness, _attachment_ , even. He _can’t_.

“What if it’s just a misunderstanding?” Jihoon thinks aloud. Toys with it in his mind, the epiphany seeping into his brain as slowly as the buzz of alcohol floating around his consciousness. “What if I’m just reading it all wrong?”

“Don’t you like it when she does stuff for you?”

“I do, but—” Jihoon squeezes his eyes shut, tight enough that it makes him see white spots behind his eyelids. “It’s just really weird, okay?”

“Well, if you didn’t like the fact that she does nice things for you all the time, why don’t you just ask her to stop?”

“I _can’t_.”

“Can’t?” Seungcheol takes another sip of soju. “Or won’t?”

“ _Can’t_ ,” Jihoon insists. “I’ll never be able to show my face around her when she rejects me—”

“ _If_ she rejects you—”

“ _When_ , not if,” says Jihoon, raising his voice. “And then it’ll make work awkward and I’m gonna have to quit and move to— I dunno, _Japan_ , and get into an entirely different field where I have a snowball’s chance in hell to run into her again.”

“Okay, first of all, you never even asked her out—”

“Out of the question,” Jihoon squawks, lifting his head up long enough to glare at Seungcheol. “I don’t believe in mixing work with dating.”

“ _Second_ , I don’t think she’s ever gonna cotton on to you feeling _anything_ for her if you keep turning tail and running like a scared rabbit every time you’re in the same room as she is.”

“I’m not scared,” Jihoon protests. The whole running away thing, he’s not even gonna refute. “It’s— it’s a self-preservation thing."

“ _Third_ ,” Seungcheol plows through, ignoring him, “you’re already awkward at work considering you can’t look her in the eye without having war flashbacks of high school. How is this any different?”

“She’s clothed and I have better control over my dick now,” says Jihoon, tone biting. “ _Obviously_ we’re always gonna be awkward.”

“Wow,” says Seungcheol, half-disbelieving, half-impressed, “Soonyoung was right. You really _do_ use sarcasm as a defense mechanism.”

“I’ll die alone and loveless,” Jihoon concludes, glumly. Maybe he should just get a cat. Cats were good. Junhui loved cats too. It’d be their only connection in this world when they parted as perfect strangers, her love for tiny, adorable animals and he wasting away like some lovelorn ghost for her.

Being a sentimental person does nothing to make him feel better even with alcohol. Why couldn’t he have been a happy drunk?

“The fact that you even think that way means we’re not drunk enough for this conversation,” says Seungcheol. He refills their cups with soju, nudging the shotglass against Jihoon’s cheek. “Drink up. We’re gonna get you wasted.”

“Cheers,” says Jihoon, sounding anything but cheerful, but takes the shot and clinks it against Seungcheol’s glass anyway. Seungcheol laughs, and they down the shots together in one go, two idiots drinking their worries away on a Tuesday night.

The soju burns in his throat but warms his empty stomach. It’s easy not to think about Junhui when he’s well on his way past intoxicated and towards dead-drunk. Easier, still, to pretend she doesn’t linger on his mind.

It’s a good thing he doesn’t have her number. That’s one less mistake he can trust himself not to make when he’s drunk.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up the next day to a mild hangover, the all-too-familiar sight of the ceiling of Soonyoung’s ceiling, and an intense urge to pee.

A small part of him vaguely remembers drunk-dialing Soonyoung’s number and _then_ getting dragged out of the bar and into an Uber by a mildly pissed-off Soonyoung, but whatever irritation Soonyoung had felt at being his chosen savior had at least been slightly offset by Seungcheol’s sheepish hand-wave, dimpled smile melting the grumpiness out of her scowl so quickly that Jihoon made a mental note to the sober part of his mind to tease her about how soft she was for any handsome oppa later on.

And she laughed at _him_ for having a type.

“You’re lucky I was just talking to Wonwoo before you called,” she grumbled on the way back to her apartment. “Of all the days you had to go get so drunk you couldn’t haul your own ass home, it just _had_ to be when I had a guest over.”

“Mmmpghrk,” Jihoon said, very eloquently, as he leaned against the window. Whoever Soonyoung was sleeping with, he _really_ didn’t want to know.

He’d ended up camping out at her living room couch, head cushioned by the mismatched throw pillows and feet warmed by Hoshi, Soonyoung’s cat, as he fell asleep. Waking up, he finds a soft fleece blanket draped carefully over his shoulders, a far cry from Soonyoung’s usual habit of throwing anything at him in the same way she’d let her own brother fend for himself, and a pair of heeled sandals in the entryway that he doesn’t recognize confirms his suspicions that maybe Soonyoung’s guest hadn’t left just yet.

The more antisocial and hungover side of him almost tempts him to burrow back into the couch and feign sleep until well past noon just so he doesn’t have to bump into them and be forced to socialize, but biological functions win out in the end. He feels around for his phone on the coffee table, nearly knocking off a couple of stationery sheets and notecards, probably something Soonyoung had to use for work, and checks his messages with a yawn. When he’s done, he pushes his ass off of the couch, slipping into a pair of bedroom slippers shaped like a cat and makes his way to the bathroom, fingers tugging the hem of his shirt up so he could scratch at his churning stomach.

And because the universe hates him, apparently, he ends up walking in on a half-asleep Junhui brushing her teeth in the bathroom, hair up in a bun and naked except for a cotton robe that does little to hide the shape of her chest.

“Oh,” says Junhui, just as Jihoon wrenches the door shut behind him with a high-pitched yelp. He hears the sound of the faucet turning on and water gushing out and onto the sink, and it takes a few more seconds before she speaks again, louder and clearer this time. “One sec—let me just spit this out and I’ll get out of your hair.”

 _What the fuck, why is she_ here, he thinks, frantic now that the discomfort in his nether regions have been muted out by the ensuing panic triggering his fight or flight instinct. The urge to run away is winning now. He can’t unsee the soft, damp curls of stray hair sticking to the expanse of her nape, a sight he’d only thought he’d see up-close through photographs and TV.

 _Fuck_. He slides down on the floor and covers his face in his palms with a groan. _Now is_ not _the time to develop inappropriate fixations, Lee Jihoon_!

The knob jiggles, and Jihoon scoots away to make space for Junhui when she opens the door slightly ajar. She peeks down at him with one of a strange, unreadable smile, the tips of her ears flushed pink from the heat of her shower.

“Bathroom’s free,” she says.

He makes an indecipherable sound that’s either a whimper of agreement or a grunt of indifference. His awkwardness doesn’t make her grin falter, though; it just grows as she looks him up and down.

“Cute slippers, by the way,” she adds, eyes crinkling, and slinks past him with a lazy sway of her hips, not unlike Hoshi prowling around the apartment looking for tiny prey to pounce on.

He peels his eyes away from the line of her back, mouth still agape, and makes an executive decision to take the longest, _quietest_ shower he can get away with without Soonyoung smelling his shame from a mile away.

And then maybe bribing Hoshi to rip up the slippers the next time he comes around, just because.

 

 

A humiliating cold shower and an incoherent, stuttered excuse at (a thankfully dressed) Junhui to go find a spare set of clothes in Soonyoung’s sock drawer later (sock drawer, what the fuck, seriously, Jihoon?), he frantically shoves at the Soonyoung-shaped lump under the comforter and tries not to have a conniption (if not a mental breakdown) at Wen Junhui making breakfast in Soonyoung’s kitchen. If nothing else, at least the freezing temperature has doused his bones enough to distract him from his pounding headache and queasy stomach, though he’s not sure if he can attribute those to the hangover just yet.

“You never warned me your guest was _Junhui_.”

“Yes, I did,” Soonyoung mutters, kicking him away. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes, visibly annoyed at being woken up. “I told you when we passed Hongdae, but you were too busy drooling on my shoulder when I started waxing poetic about her pajamas.”

“I was asleep in the car!”

“Oh,” says Soonyoung. “Damn. Too bad you missed it. She looks really good in lace, you know.”

Jihoon makes a strangled sound at the back of his throat, distressed. Bad mental images. _Very_ bad mental images. Stop thinking impure thoughts about someone blissfully humming in the kitchen while scrounging up enough ingredients from Soonyoung’s sad excuse of a fridge to make them all a perfectly decent breakfast. _No_.

Impervious to his internal crisis, Soonyoung drags the comforter closer to her body and starts to make her bed. “I could die happy now that I’ve slept in the same bed as Junnie. Seventeen-year-old you would be so jealous.”

 _I still am_ , Jihoon thinks, sullenly, and settles for ignoring her in favor of rummaging around her closet for a change of clothes. Youngwon’s at least a couple of sizes larger than he is, but at least Soonyoung’s body frame is close enough to his that it’s not too much of an issue for him to grab a spare shirt and a pair of leggings without it looking comical on him. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Now, if only he could find a t-shirt that was less colorful, more discreet, and, more importantly, less indicative of Soonyoung’s interests. He picks up an SMTOWN shirt and contemplates nudity while he dumps last night’s clothes into the washing machine instead.

In the end, he ends up digging up an old PE shirt from uni that makes Soonyoung comment on how much he looks like jailbait in it, and Jihoon flips a finger at her as he herds her out of the room to let him change in peace. Before she leaves, though, he grips at her arm in the doorway, a question itching on the tip of his tongue.

“Did you give me a blanket last night?” He blurts out before he can lose the nerve, and her raised eyebrows make him quail inside, but he’s mastered the art of bluffing in front of her long enough to not betray his nervousness.

“I went straight to bed after I hauled your ass to the couch,” Soonyoung scoffs, shaking her head. “I bet you were just sleepwalking and forgot about getting one from Youngwon’s room.”

He hesitates, licking his lower lip to distract himself from the flutter of air churning in his stomach. _Don’t read it wrong_ , he tells himself. _Don’t_.

“Do you think it was Jun?”

“No way,” says Soonyoung, skeptical as ever. “She was out like a light when I crawled into my room.”

The bubble in his belly deflates with a pop, just as quickly as it comes. “Oh.”

Soonyoung narrows her eyes at him, and the sharp, considering look reminds him of being seventeen and feeling small and cornered as he tries to hide his budding infatuation on an ulzzang cosplayer all over again. “But if it were…” Soonyoung muses, looking too amused that it makes Jihoon shrink a little in wariness. “What are you gonna do about it, Jihoonie?”

 

 

The answer to that question, unfortunately, is nothing.

He’s not an idiot. He knows the gap between them is as wide as the distance between the North and South Pole, as deep as the Mariana’s trench, as incomprehensible as any ending to a CLAMP series, and the only possible conclusion to an attempt at a confession would most likely end badly for both parties involved.

But mostly him. Or just him. It’s always the non-famous people bleeding into anonymity that never really have their sides heard.

Soonyoung thinks the whole situation is cute and aspirational, if not utterly baffling. God only knows how many times Soonyoung’s impressed upon him the weight and gravity of Wen Junhui deigning to even _look_ at him; a part of Jihoon wants to either snark back about how she should either just date Junhui if she wanted to, or at least shed the hypocrisy long enough to even give Wonwoo an answer of her own, but he doubts she’d take it as anything but a joke. Soonyoung’s not _realistic_ as he is, and she thinks that getting into a relationship with a celebrity is all perks and favors, expensive wine, flashy gifts, rendezvous at five star hotels, the whole shebang—but what she lacks in foresight, he makes up for it in fatalism and persistent warnings, even if she thinks he’s the stuffiest person in the world.

It’s exactly what he’s told Seungcheol: it’s just self-preservation. No big deal.

He’s still not gonna date Junhui. Ever. Not that she’d want to date him either. It’s just—

It’s just not something that happens outside of dramas and movies, especially if one of them is dead-set on making sure it never happens. Really.

“For a guy who likes to bluff and act like you don’t really care much, you’re actually a pretty shy person, aren’t you?” Had been a succinct assessment of his character back in his freshman year when he’d been hanging around upperclassmen at an org party and pressured into admitting he’d never really tried dating anyone, much less asked a girl out his whole life. Seungcheol had only slurred it out in passing, already well past sober and crawling dangerously to black-out drunk levels back when they all had shitt(ier) alcohol tolerance, but the epiphany had stayed with Jihoon all throughout his college dating years spent secretly crushing on other people from afar and never saying or doing anything about it in the process.

It wasn’t anything too earth-shattering or heartbreaking the way Soonyoung always made it out to be, insisting on plying him with break-up movies, heaps of chocolate, a four-pack set of tissue rolls and an unwanted shoulder to cry on every time they found out the object of his affections was either taken, disinterested, or (worse) emotionally unavailable. Not that Jihoon himself was a shining example of a well-adjusted person—when it came down to it, no amount of animanga or OSTs could inspire feelings of confidence and an actual desire to take the relationship one step further. Keeping people at a distance, drawing the line firmly within the boundaries of friendship—it was easier to just let it go.

“2D will never betray me,” Jihoon had decided, grimly considering the contents of his glass. They’d changed the topic after that, but it was still a little awkward and off to watch girls getting fetched by their boyfriends or couples pairing off and going home when the party tapered off. It was only a little later when he was in bed that he allowed himself to think that maybe— just maybe—he kinda knew what Soonyoung felt when she complained about being jealous of people with flowering love lives, envious and bitter at turns.

In that vulnerable moment—as humiliating as it was, in retrospect—he’d dug up his bookmarks of _MoonTenshi64_ , fingers stroking his screen instead of slipping past the waistband of his shorts to get himself off. He thumbed at the curve of her smile, crinkly-eyed, bright, and he wondered what it’d be like, to maybe be with someone who found it easy to play-pretend and have no expectations whatsoever.

Like something straight out of Video Girl Ai, maybe, except he’s not a pure-hearted teenager. The thought made him chuckle, but the sentimental part of him just heaved a sigh. He closed his tabs, deleted the bookmarks, and tried to just forget about it and sleep the heaviness in his chest off.

He spent every Black Day after that eating jjajangmyeon with his friends, lonely but not alone. And then he forgot about it completely, until he met Junhui face-to-face many, many years later.

 

 

“Good morning,” Junhui greets him when his stomach betrays him and leads him to the scent of food coming from the kitchen, cheerful as ever. She turns the fire low, tongue sticking out in concentration, and it looks so endearing Jihoon has to brace himself against a stool just to make sure he doesn’t make any sudden movements that could be misconstrued for. Well. Being an even more awkward creeper.

Junhui’s wearing an apron, looking more at ease with it like she owns it instead of Soonyoung. It’s a frilly gag gift Wonwoo had gotten Soonyoung last year that Soonyoung maintains is a subtle insult about her so-so culinary skills but Jihoon suspects has more to do with Wonwoo’s less-than-savory interests along the lines of naked apron cosplay, that pervert— aaand great, now he’s thinking about it, oh god, where’s the brain bleach when you need it?

“Morning,” Jihoon grunts out. He makes a face and tries to hide it behind a swig of water, but the sour taste in his mouth is still there, lingering.

Junhui turns around to face him, leaning up against the counter across him. “Would you like to have breakfast,” she muses with a teasing twinkle in her eye, “or would you rather have me?”

Jihoon spews out the water that promptly goes into the wrong pipe, not unlike a cat hacking out a hair ball in full view of its owner. (Not that Junhui is his owner or anything, hahaha. _Shut up_.) “ _What_?” He gasps out, spluttering and red-faced as he waves Junhui’s frantic apologies away. “Who taught you how to say that?”

“Soonyoung did,” Junhui trills, pink-cheeked and grinning like a pleased kid. “She said you’d like it.”

Jihoon groans. “Please never listen to anything Soonyoung tells you ever again.”

“But she’s very helpful,” Junhui insists. She turns back to turn the stove off and starts to pull out some bowls from the dishrack. “She showed me some of your school pictures last night.”

“Oh god.” He groans into his hands, dreading whatever lies Soonyoung’s fed her about his younger years. He can only pray it has nothing to do with high school and the joys of discovering the seedier parts of the internet. “I’m gonna kill her.”

“Please don’t, I’m sure a lot of people will miss her if you do,” says Junhui. “Myself included.”

“I’ll make it quick and painless,” he says, digging around the cupboard for some paper towels. He doesn’t find any, the drawers filled with cupcake wrappers, carton boxes and baking ingredients. _Huh_. He narrows his eyes at the contents of the drawer and makes a mental note to interrogate Soonyoung later.

Junhui hands him a handkerchief from her pockets, and he uses it to dab at his face. It smells like her favorite perfume— some crisp, floral scent he could never identify, except by association with her. He breathes it in again before he has to return it to its rightful owner.

“We’d lose a very valuable source of information if you do,” she tells him.

“The only thing she ever talks about is work-related gossip.” And idols. Which, technically is kind of the same thing.

“She teaches me a lot of things.”

Her words from earlier still make him flush, but it’s far from being a stellar example of the value of Soonyoung’s ideas of an enlightened conversation starter. “I’m sure,” he scoffs.

“She does!” Junhui defends, even as the object of their conversation is wailing a TVXQ song in the shower without a care for the other inhabitants in the apartment or her neighbors. “She tells me a lot about her family. Her friends.” _You_ , she doesn’t say, but Jihoon’s pretty good at reading between the lines, denial or not. He pretends not to notice, though, and doesn’t say anything, if only to veer as far away from _that_ train of thought as possible.

Junhui falters a little, but plows on, barely showing signs of discouragement at his silence. ”She also says you like chapaguri a lot and that you know all the best places to eat in for a good price. Maybe you can recommend some to me?”

A stone settles into the pit of his stomach, solid and unyielding. “I dunno,” he says, scratching at his knee. “We might not have the same tastes.”

“We’ll never know until we try, won’t we?”

Jihoon doesn’t respond. He keeps his eyes peeled on a spot above her shoulder, away from her face, the closest to a rejection he can get. Awkward. They’re so awkward together, but he needs to keep himself at arm’s length unless it turns into something else. He can’t risk it. Can’t.

She takes a deep breath but doesn’t press him, at least, busying herself with draining the water from the noodles with a strainer over the sink. “Or I could go alone. I like being by myself too, you know. Less people to think about. More me time. It gives me time to think.”

 _I feel the same way_ , he thinks. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying anything.

“I never end up finishing my own meals, though,” she continues. “The servings are so big, and sometimes I just want to drink tea more than eat. Coffee shops are too noisy in the afternoon, so I don’t really like going to them much. Ramyun places are good, too.” A few strands of her hair falls out of her bun, sticking to the side of her neck in wisps. She huffs. “Sorry, can you get that for me? My hands are full.”

With some hesitation, he gets up. Woodenly, he approaches her back, trying not too feel too intimidated at the difference in their heights. She’s so tall, he’s at eye level with her nape already; they really don’t fit together like this, he guesses. It’d be impossible to even go for a back hug like one of those couples on TV, the way it’s so easy for people like Kim Mingyu or Wonwoo to do it to her on set.

What a depressing thought.

He takes a deep breath and carefully undoes her bun, working out the kinks and tangles with a gentleness trained from years of dealing with fussy talents and Soonyoung pestering him into braiding her hair. He brushes her hair out of her forehead. Her cheek. The side of her face. He keeps his eyes trained on her hair, smoothing down the shorter strands that stick up at the top of her head and pulling the rest of it back in a loose ponytail.

“I like anything cheap,” says Jihoon, as he ties her hair up with the elastic she’d been using. “Just—not anything _too_ spicy. I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

He takes a step back when he’s finished, letting the space between them grow. She touches the back of her head, feeling at the ponytail with a small smile and a nod of thanks. Her fingers linger at the base of her neck, considering.

“Nothing too spicy, got it,” she says. When he makes his way back to his seat, she’s already busy transferring the noodles to each bowl with steady hands and a tong. “I’ll make sure to remember it.”

Fuck all the butterflies in his stomach right now. On anyone else, it’d sound greasy and off-putting, but it just rolls off her tongue as easily as small talk, light-hearted and far from serious. He tries to swallow the lump that’s formed in his throat, but it’s still as ever-present as a solid fist, heavy and discomfiting. it makes his voice sound rough when he speaks. “You really don’t have to.”

“It might come in handy in the future,” she insists. She sets the fullest bowl in front of him with a flourish. “You never know.”

Jihoon doesn’t know what to say to that, and whatever courage she seems to have mustered earlier is absent now, leaving them to eat in relative silence except for the scrape of metal chopsticks against the ceramic bowls. It’s not an uneasy quiet, though—just. Slightly awkward, but not enough that they feel the need or pressure to fill it. There’s still expectation in it, heavy and loaded, but Jihoon wonders if it’s just him being lonely and projecting it. It can’t be anything but that.

It’s too easy to fall into the lure of normalcy, to forget that she’s adept at fitting herself into situations otherwise out of his depth like she’s play-acting. And that—that’s a dangerous reminder that keeps his greed in check, anchored down.

“By the way,” he says, and Junhui peers at him curiously, head tilted to the side. “Do you know how to bake?”

 

 

It’s one thing to admit you’re attracted to someone just for the face value of their looks, but it’s another when it bleeds into something a little closer to home. It’s bad enough that he’s seen Junhui in cosplay or doing photoshoots clad in the bare minimum clothing to pass for lower content ratings, but now that he’s seen her barefaced, dressed down, and living out a domestic scene from his less-depraved fantasies, it’s even worse.

A long time ago, he’d toyed with the idea of how she’d probably fit into a cooking show if she ever decided to be more niche with her projects, but actually witnessing it in real life is making him reconsider the capacity of his brain to sit through half hour-long episodes without looking like a drooling idiot in the process, the same way Soonyoung doesn’t hide her greasy appreciation _at all_ when she joins them later on.

“Marry me, Junhui,” she moans around her plate of noodles, inappropriate as ever.

Junhui smiles, but shrugs without a word, too busy nibbling on her food. Her eyes dart from Jihoon to Soonyoung and back again, like she wants to say something, but she seems to think better of it and keeps her mouth shut, quieter now that they’re not alone.

“You sound exactly like the girl that died from food poisoning in Battle Royale,” Jihoon grumbles.

“It’s too early for you to be depressing, Jihoonie,” says Soonyoung, reaching out to poke his cheek patronizingly with the blunt edge of her chopsticks. She’s petting the cat on her lap with her free hand, the pull of her fingers stronger to Hoshi than the deterrent of water dripping from her still-damp hair onto his fur. Watching Soonyoung with her cat says a lot about love and suffering; it just makes Junhui’s eyes glimmer with interest the whole time, though, and Jihoon’s not sure if she’s picking up the right lessons from it.

With a grunt, he shoves her chopsticks away and gets up to clear his empty bowl. He brushes off Junhui’s protests when he stacks the stuff she’d used for cooking into the sink and starts to do the dishes.

“Leave him alone, Jun,” Soonyoung stage-whispers. “He’s just showing off. He really _hates_ cleaning.”

“Don’t you have other people to terrorize?” Jihoon asks, wrinkling his nose.

“You’re lucky I even put up with you,” Soonyoung bites back without much heat, and turns to Junhui to vent about whatever demanding and high-maintenance thing Wonwoo’s asked her to do _again_.

By the time he’s done washing up and drying the dishes, Junhui’s manager is already downstairs to pick her up. Jisoo turns down Soonyoung’s (manic-eyed, if anyone asks Jihoon) offer of coming up for tea, but Soonyoung insists on helping Junhui bring her stuff (a purse and a gym bag, _tops_ ) to the car, undeterred by the refusal.

Jihoon doesn’t come with them, content to carry Hoshi in his arms to keep him from slinking out of the apartment and following after Soonyoung, but Junhui stays back a few seconds longer, picking the blanket Jihoon folded on the couch and draping it over her arm. Oblivious to Jihoon’s internal screaming, she runs her hands over the top of Hoshi’s head, lingering in the doorway with Jihoon as Soonyoung marches to the elevator like someone on a grave, life-changing mission.

Then again, if she’s after wrangling a date with Junhui’s manager, it probably is for her. Jihoon makes a mental note to maybe let it slip to Wonwoo as a heads-up, and then maybe avoid running into them in public unless he wants to suffer through even more awkwardness.

He’s contemplating the merits of just filing for a long vacation leave to get away from the eventual clusterfuck when Junhui retracts her hand from Hoshi’s fur and takes out her phone from her purse. She speaks so quietly he almost misses it, if he weren’t paying attention to her mouth, shiny with a liberal application of gloss and smudged from all the times she’s been licking at her lips.

“Can you give me your number?” She asks, voice low. “I always meant to ask for it, but it didn’t seem right to not get it from you directly.”

 _In what universe would Wen Junhui even need my number_ , he thinks. It feels so surreal that he rattles it off without much thought, and she carefully thumbs in his number, repeating it back to him just to make sure.

He feels his phone vibrate against his hip, but he ignores it. “Thank you,” says Jihoon, finally. “For the food—and—just you being nice. Everything.”

Junhui’s brows wrinkle together, even as she gives him a confused smile. “You’re welcome? But— I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“The—” He takes a deep breath, shaking his head. It’s not just breakfast, or cupcakes, or keeping him warm. “You know what? Never mind.”

She opens her mouth, meaning to say something more, but Soonyoung’s yelling for her at the elevator, excited and impatient. Junhui’s eyes dart from the direction of Soonyoung’s voice to Jihoon, as if checking the hallway if anyone else can see, and before he realizes it, she’s leaning forward and closing her eyes and oh god _holy shit_ this is exactly how wet dream number five started oh god oh god _oh god_ —

He shuts his eyes tightly, shoulders stiff and squared, and feels her lips land on his cheek, barely the corner of his mouth, with a loud smack. He opens one eye, still frozen in place, and watches her pull back and turn around.

“Check your phone,” she says, looking breathless and flushed, and Jihoon just stares back as she waves and starts jogging to the elevator, where Soonyoung’s still waiting.

It’s only when Hoshi starts yowling and digging his nails into Jihoon’s arms that he realizes he’s been clutching onto the cat and holding his breath the entire time, just like an idiot.

He has to feel for the doorknob behind him at least five times before he can bring his fingers to stop shaking long enough for him to get back inside.

 

 

“Why are you so red in the face?” Soonyoung asks, when she gets back ten minutes later. Ten minutes too short for Soonyoung, no doubt, but she looks way too pleased about something that it makes him suspicious and a little on edge. “Are you _blushing_?" She frowns. "Did you watch porn while I was gone? At least tell me you cleaned up when you jacked off, Jihoon!”

“ _You’re_ blushing,” Jihoon retorts, ignoring the rest of her words in favor of narrowing his eyes at her. “What happened? Did you finally brainwash Jisoo-hyung into going on a date?”

“As a matter of fact, I just did,” she brags, preening under his frown. “He’s taking me out tomorrow night. Can you come over and do my makeup for me, Jihoonie?”

“ _Just_ your makeup,” he concedes with a sigh, but part of him is already resigned to his fate of being her impromptu consultant on the relative sluttiness of her dress and the _perfect_ hairstyle that wouldn’t get messed up in case Jisoo turns out to be a lot more aggressive than he looks and goes for a kiss. Or so she says.

 _Poor Wonwoo_ , he thinks, and reaches for his phone. Then he thinks better of it when he sees the message he’s left untouched since he first saw it and stared at it with disbelieving eyes for a solid five minutes. (He’s pinched his cheeks more than once. It still hurts like a bitch even now.)

 _Let’s get dinner next time, my treat_ , an unknown number says on his phone screen. _It’ll be our little secret, just the two of us._

He puts his phone down again and covers his face with Soonyoung’s throw pillow with a groan.


	3. Chapter 3

He doesn’t reply to her, not yet. How could he? He’s spent so much time trying to convince himself of how enormously disastrous it would be to even entertain the thought of _anything_ that it just makes him feel like a fraud now that the offer is tentatively on the table, waiting.

It’s a mind over heart thing. Or his dick. He thinks about the smudge of lip gloss she’d left on his cheek, then, fruity and sticky to his skin, and feels the contents of his stomach coil together, tightly. Yeah, definitely his dick.

He draws up a list the next night while he’s pet sitting for Soonyoung— “I need to be prepared in case something happens,” she said on her way out, deceptively lofty even through her giddy nerves. “ _Don’t_ wait up.” _Gag_. — and bored out of his mind in her apartment. Lists are good at helping him rationalize, to think things through. Though if he’s honest, lists are better at giving him more reasons to procrastinate, and it’s with a mixture of sinking dread and spiteful validation that the words start coming to him easily when he starts out trying to convince himself why taking the next step would be a Terrible Idea, clearly.

 

 

Reasons not to message her:

  * This definitely looks like a date
  * The press will find out
  * Fanboys (and fangirls) will kill me
  * Her manager will kill me
  * Soonyoung will never let me live it down
  * I’m bad at small talk. I wouldn’t know what to say to her
  * What if we’re awkward together? What if we don’t talk and she thinks I’m just some boring guy?
  * Oh god, what if I end up just staring at her face?
  * What if I stare anywhere _but_ her face?
  * ~~How would we even meet each other’s parents? What if they want her to marry someone Chinese? What if _my_ parents want me to marry someone Korean?~~ (This one, he strikes out, because _marriage_ , what the fuck, how’d he even jump there from a first date?)
  * I may or may not be a replacement goldfish for ‘Hao Hao’. Whoever that is. (He’s not jealous, nope. Shut up.)



He groans and crumples everything up and out of his sight, and then orders chicken and cola for dinner on Soonyoung’s tab, just so he can drown his sorrows into food. And maybe two cups of iced coffee and some red bean ice cream for himself, but that’s okay—there’s no one’s around to judge him, and Soonyoung’s paying for it with her card anyway.

He rationalizes the list with Seungcheol, but it’s no use—they end up getting into a small argument instead of putting some semblance of order into Jihoon’s life.

(“She’s probably a total bitch anyway,” says Seungcheol, sounding more harried and irritated than Jihoon’s ever heard him, no doubt reliving some experience from an _impossible_ celebrity. That, or he’s just pissed Jihoon’s disturbing his gaming time just to be his sounding board for his not-love problems. “She can’t be as nice as she looks.”

“Fuck you, she’s _perfect_ ,” Jihoon yells into the speaker phone, and then promptly hangs up.)

Caffeinated and riding on a sugar high, he sets to work on the list again, tapping his pen against the paper like a jittery woodpecker for an entire episode of one of Kim Mingyu’s dramas before he can even write anything again.

 

 

Reasons to reply:

  * I like her
  * I like her a lot
  * Like, more than 2D levels and any other noona I’ve liked

(Here he has to pause and put his phone down long enough to roll around the couch and yell into a pillow for a few minutes, fingers digging into the cushion so tightly the polyester clumps around his grip and just looks like a droopy, sad shell afterwards.

“It’s official,” he tells himself, sounding far too grim. “I’m regressing into a jumble of teenage hormones again. Gross.”

A pause, and then— he starts to write again, slower, this time.) 

  * I’d be an idiot not to, wouldn’t I?



He puts his pen down and picks up his phone instead.

 _Sure_ , he texts back, proper punctuation, no lapslock. Poised. Cool. Detached. _Are you free on Saturday?_

 _Yes!!!_ She texts back exactly fifteen minutes later, making the corner of his lips twitch. No hearts or emojis though. Strange. _I can make time. When and where do you wanna meet?_

He texts her the address to this discreet hole-in-the-wall place near his old uni, one of his favorite haunts when he, Soonyoung and Seungcheol were suffering through finals week and needed a pick-me-upper afterwards. It’s probably not an excellent choice of venue to take a girl out for the first time (much less a celebrity), but Jihoon is adamantly insisting it’s _not_ a date and 3 in the afternoon on a weekend is pretty much a dead zone for the owner.

Besides, there’s a cat café a block away that he wants to take her to after, if only because she’d always bemoaned not having the time or space to keep a pet in. It’s not because he wants to extend the meal to coffee and pets, no. It’s just— it’s a back-up plan, that’s all. At least if he crashes and burns with his conversation skills, they can just forget about it in the face of kittens. Cats make everything better.

His phone vibrates in his hand, and he almost drops it in his hurried fumbling. Hoshi blinks at him from his spot on top of Jihoon’s laptop, tail flicking from side to side slowly, like he’s annoyed by the disturbance.

“Give me a break,” Jihoon tells the cat. “I don’t need more judgment when I’m pressured enough as it is.”

Hoshi ignores him, and Jihoon covers his face with his palms, exhaling and trying to ease the tightness in his stomach. Then he picks up his phone again, calmer this time.

 _Great_ , she texts back. _It’s a date_.

 

 

“You’ll never believe this,” Soonyoung wails, stepping into her apartment before ten in the evening. It’s much earlier than she’d been hoping for when she’d squeezed into the little black dress she usually reserved for after parties at award shows and going to reunions with any exes and old crushes in attendance, petty to the end. “Junnie, of all people, just managed to cockblock me tonight without even realizing it.”

She leans against the wall, undoing the buckle of her strappy sandals. “Jisoo-oppa suddenly had to take care of an emergency with her schedule! I can’t believe she just called in the middle of our date just so she could get him to rearrange her weekend plans for some dumb business meeting.” She toes off her heels in the doorway, not even bothering to prop them up straight. “Who even has meetings on _Saturdays_? Crazy people and traitors, that’s who.”

She drops her keys into a ceramic bowl Wonwoo got her as a souvenir from Japan once, and heads into the living room undoing the braid Jihoon had painstakingly plaited with furious, jerky fingers. “If her crush on you weren’t so adorable, I’d have half the mind to think she was trying to sabotage my chances with—” She pauses, taking in the sight in front of her. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for the floor to swallow me up,” says Jihoon, dazed. He doesn’t even look at her from his fetal position on the floor, exhausted from so much yelling and jumping on the sofa to even move. If any of the neighbors asked, he’d point at Hoshi for the noise. All of it. Speaking of which, it’d probably be a good idea to butter her up before she has to deal with the noise complaints anytime soon. “How’d the date go?”

Soonyoung makes a complicated face, dropping her purse on the coffee table and collapsing on the couch. Her feet knock against the top of his head, but he just wrinkles his nose instead of batting her toes away. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” she says, glumly. She sounds so upset, he probably would have thought better of telling her about his agonizing back-and-forth with Junhui if he’d actually been planning on making himself vulnerable to his teasing. As it is, he just feels mildly nauseated and unsettled, the contents of his stomach flopping at her frown.

He keeps his mouth shut, feeling useless.

Hoshi starts rubbing up against her legs, and she bends forward to coo at him and tug him into her lap. The purring noises and the persistent way he bumps his head against her palm is enough to make her bad mood dampen a bit, and Jihoon manages to breathe a sigh of relief. Soonyoung’s always been a little moody, a little quick-tempered, but having a cat’s improved her patience and her mood more than even the pull of music shows and variety programs featuring idols can, no matter how much she denies it.

Hoshi’s purring tapers off into silence as he drifts off to sleep in her lap, and in the ensuing silence, Soonyoung reaches around for the remote control and turns the TV on. After a couple of seconds of mindless channel switching, she comes across a replay of one of Wonwoo’s older films, and she makes a disgruntled sound at the back of her throat. “Did you say anything to Wonwoo about tonight?”

“No,” Jihoon lies. “Why?”

“He kept texting me the whole time I was trying to talk to Jisoo-oppa,” she says. “ _And then_ he actually _called_ him when I wasn’t picking up, just because he wanted to confirm his flight details the day after. What a dick, right?”

Definitely sounds like something Wonwoo would do. As much as Jihoon doesn’t want to _think_ about all the things Wonwoo even wants to do to Soonyoung with his dick, there’s something to be said about his sheer tenacity and stubbornness. Must be masochism. No wonder he and Junhui are friends.

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” says Jihoon, propping himself up on his arms and raising his upper body to look at her. “Aren’t you on leave for your mom’s birthday?”

“Well, yeah, but he could have just called while I was on the train or something. It’s not like they’re not used to me taking work-related calls in the middle of a vacation.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to bother you then.”

“I guess,” she says, deflating. She looks pensive for a moment, before something else crosses her mind that makes her sit up impulsively, disturbing Hoshi from his sleep. “Or maybe he’s just actively trying to cockblock me so I never get another date with Jisoo-oppa! That _jerkface_ —”

 _Sorry, Wonwoo_ , he thinks, plopping back down on the floor with a sigh and already tuning her out. _I tried_.

 

 

The week passes in a blur to Jihoon. Soonyoung goes home for her mom’s birthday, and Wonwoo flies to Jeju for a variety show with one of the other managers in the agency to fill in for Soonyoung’s absence. Jihoon doesn’t see much of Junhui in the interim, not when Wonwoo’s out filming elsewhere and his presence isn’t needed in the drama he co-stars in with Junhui until the week after, but he _does_ share an awkward moment with her manager at a nearby coffee shop on Wednesday, Jisoo giving him a polite (if not distracted) smile, and Jihoon eyeing him with a curt nod in return.

It’s awkward knowing the vague details of his less-than-stellar date with Soonyoung, while at the same time not knowing to what extent, exactly, Junhui’s divulged details about _their_ not-date. He can guess that Jisoo likely feels the same way, if the way his eyes turn assessing at Jihoon clutching his phone to his chest is any indication of it. Scary man, that Hong Jisoo. Best not to get on his bad side if he can help it.

In the meantime, he and Junhui only exchange very brief, very casual, if not _professional_ texts to each other, innocuous things like: _Good morning. Have you eaten yet? Do you know any good salons in the area? I’m bored. Have a good day at work!_ — things that Seungcheol _swears_ up and down are usual behaviors of a couple dating, but Jihoon wouldn’t really know outside of dramas and movie scripts. He hasn’t dated in _years_ , if his short-lived crushes, blind dates and group dates even count. He hasn’t been in much contact with girls outside of family and the Kwons, really. Fuck conventional dating standards of their age group!

“You’re really having a mental breakdown over this, aren’t you?” Seungcheol asks, drily, over drinks and dinner on Friday night. 

“What gave it away?” Jihoon grunts out, grumpy and moody from too little sleep and too much time spent staring at the ceiling as the days and hours leading up to Saturday approach.

“Probably the panda eyes,” says Seungcheol. He squints at Jihoon, then snorts. “ _Definitely_ the panda eyes.”

“Hey, I never made fun of you whenever you had a crisis of confidence picking people up at bars,” Jihoon protests.

“Yeah, because most of the time you stayed at home instead of being a good wingman to _me_ ,” Seungcheol scoffs. Jihoon opens his mouth, but thinks better of it. On one hand, the only reason he even ditched him was because he’d been trying to play wingman to _Soonyoung_ back when she still held a torch for Seungcheol. On the other hand, he really _was_ lazy when it came to socializing. So much for that.

Seungcheol picks up a slice of pizza, impervious to his grimace. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be fine. I know you make a big deal about hating things like putting yourself out there, but if you like her so much, it shouldn’t be that much of a chore.”

“I know that,” Jihoon mutters. It’s not so much the idea of having to make an effort that bugs him, but more to do with the lowkey fear of failing that does. He’s seen Soonyoung throw herself headfirst into so many chances, only to have the reality barely live up to expectations. “I just don’t want it to be weird at work between us if it doesn’t pan out.”

“Was it weird between me and Soonyoung after I turned her down?” Jihoon opens his mouth. “Never mind, don’t answer that. _The point is_ , even if someone’s feelings get hurt, it’s not the end of the world. You guys will meet other people, and someday you can just laugh about how much of a big deal you made this whole thing out to be in your head. If it ends well, you might just get lucky and hook up with your teenage dream. Maybe more, if that’s what you want out of it. And if it turns out to be a bust, you can always ask me or Soonyoung to bail you out if you don’t wanna hurt her feelings.”

Jihoon sighs, playing with the ring on his index finger. “I guess…” He says, uneasily, even if his chest flutters the teensiest bit, touched.

One thing Seungcheol knows so well about him is his refusal to navigate through life asking for help from other people if he can help it. Having an out is a safe option he hadn’t even considered when he’d been mulling over meeting Junhui alone. Seungcheol’s a pretty dependable guy, when it comes down to it.

“If you keep overthinking it, maybe that’s a sign that it’s not gonna work out,” Seungcheol muses, and then shrugs at Jihoon’s wide-eyed, alarmed look. “Either way, you’re not gonna know unless you try.”

“That was the worst pep talk in the world,” Jihoon informs him.

“Thanks,” says Seungcheol, clinking his glass against Jihoon’s. “I try.”

He takes a large bite out of his pizza, and then turns to Jihoon with a grim expression. “Just promise me one thing, Jihoon.”

“What?”

“Whatever you do,” says Seungcheol, sounding more solemn than he has any right to be when he’s barely sober, “please, please, _please_ don’t talk about cosplay.”

Screw that, Seungcheol’s an asshole. He watches Seungcheol throw his head back, howling with laughter, and he gets up from his seat to abandon Seungcheol, unfinished dinner, unpaid bill and all.

 

 

 _I was only concerned you’d get inappropriate erections before you even got to first base_ , Seungcheol texts him later. _Wouldn’t want you to scare off your goddess with your dick, right?_

 _Fuck you_ , Jihoon types, then backspaces and leaves him on read, like he deserves.

His friends are all jerks. He can totally do this without their help.

 

 

He can’t do this.

He’s pacing outside the restaurant he’d agreed to get a late lunch with Junhui in, feeling more stressed out than he’d ever been in the same spot, even worse than that time he and his uni friends had all been counting down the hours until their grades were posted online. He’s not worried about the food too much— he wouldn’t have brought her here if he were— but it’s only now that he’s coming to realize what a fucking idiot he is, taking her to a _Chinese restaurant_ when she’s _Chinese_?

What if she hates it? What if it’s not authentic enough? What if the dimsum is nothing compared to the ones she’s tried back home? Oh god, what if he makes her feel homesick? She’s mentioned off-hand in a few variety shows and interviews that she gets really bad bouts of homesickness once in a while. What if he’s unknowingly triggering negative feelings in her and dooming them all to a meal full of tears and regret?

 _God, if I were you, I’d be offering to eat her out right now instead of taking her out to lunch_ , he can hear Soonyoung bemoan in his head. The only reason he isn’t even hearing anything from her is because she still has no clue he’s even going on a date. A date! One he’s dangerously close to copping out of. Oh god, why do all the dramas and movies skip this part of the story and focus on the fluttering feelings instead of the intense desire to hurl?

 _HELP_ , he texts Seungcheol instead. _I’M NOT OKAY. I’M FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW_.

 _Is she there yet?_ Seungcheol replies after a few seconds. Ten long, interminable seconds Jihoon spends trying not to drill a hole into his phone screen with the power of his eyes.

Jihoon looks inside the restaurant, peeking over to where Junhui has been seated for the past seven minutes chatting with the ahjumma that owns the place. She’s wearing a face mask and a hooded jacket, but her height and her posture’s enough to give her away. Even then, she still looks like she’s just casually strolled out of a photoshoot, orange blush on her cheeks and skin tone even and dewy from what Jihoon suspects is air cushion foundation. Any attempts to pass off as a regular uni student are virtually impossible now. Thank god there isn’t anyone else inside except for a guy in his sixties that probably has no idea who she even is.

He takes a picture with his phone, then sends it to Seungcheol, data plan be damned. _How am I supposed to look her in the eye again when she looks like that_?

 _Talk to her about make-up_. Not a full five seconds later, Seungcheol backtracks. _No wait, you want her to sleep with you, not start a Youtube tutorial or bring up work._

 _Does everything have to be about sex with you_?

 _¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬_ , says Seungcheol, followed by a GIF of Kim Mingyu making a heart sign at the camera. _Go get her, tiger!_

Useless. He stifles a groan and pockets his phone, trying to muster enough courage to go inside. Deep, calming breaths, he thinks, feeling his chest flutter. One, two, three—

He puts a hand on the door handle and pushes it open with a light heart.

 

 

For a better part of high school, Soonyoung was obsessed with dating games. She used to make Jihoon look up walkthroughs and dialogue choices as she played through all the routes, forcing him to sit through her hysterical shrieks and muffled screaming every time the object of her save file’s affection agreed to go out with her on a date.

It used to bug Jihoon, how the characters would always stare head-on at the screen, like the player character was the only one they could focus on. It felt too unnatural, too scripted. Too intense. Soonyoung loved it. Jihoon didn’t pretend he could understand.

Now, though, with Junhui’s face openly breaking out into a pleased grin, eyes trained on him, only on him, he thinks he finally knows what it is about those games that appealed to Soonyoung all those years ago. He can’t tear his eyes away from her, either.

“You’re early,” she says after they’ve settled down across each other, orders in and plates of chicken feet and steamed pork buns in front of them. They’re in a cozy corner booth, away from prying eyes and nosy ears, the scant luxury of privacy they could afford in a place like this. “It’s only 2 PM.”

A smoother man following a script writer would have said something like, _I wanted to spend more time with you. One more hour’s not even enough_. Because Jihoon’s trade is in visual art instead of words, he says, bluntly, “You’re earlier.”

Junhui’s cheeks turn pink, a conspicuous contrast to the orange blush on her skin. It should clash on her skin tone, but Jihoon finds he’s not too disturbed by it. She’s always lovely, even when she doesn’t try to be.

The flip-flopping of his insides returns.

“I had to leave early in case Jisoo-oppa swung by,” she explains, tucking her hair behind her ear. “He thinks I’m on a—”

“Business meeting, right?” He says, dryly. She looks surprised for a moment, then chastised. “Soonyoung told me. Said it cut her date with hyung short.”

Junhui manages to school her expression into something more playful. Coy. The sight of it makes Jihoon’s throat lock up and his belly simmer with something darker. “Well,” she says. “You’re _my_ business, aren’t you?”

He almost chokes on a dumpling, flustered. “Do you always talk like that?” He asks. 

“Talk like what?” She asks, slowly. Deliberately. Like she’s trying to mull over words.

“Like—” _Like you know exactly what you’re doing, but you don’t want to give everything away_. “Like you’re not serious about anything.”

“Who says I’m not serious about anything?” She says, but there’s a strange smile on her face, a little crooked. “I’m very serious about you.” At his disgruntled expression, she laughs and continues. “Korean is very hard, you know. It takes a while for me to process that some things don’t translate well when they come out of my mouth.”

“You’ve lived here long enough, though.”

“I’ve only started working here a few of years ago.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t stay here when you were younger.” She cocks her head to the side in confusion, and he clarifies: “Didn’t you have a student visa before?”

“Have you been stalking me?” She teases, but she purses her lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone I was here as an exchange student once.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough to bruise. He’d almost let it slip that he’d gone through her entire blog in a desperate bid to find out anything and everything he could sate his curiosity with beyond the profile of her SNS account and her wall posts. Yeah, uh. Not exactly a great conversation starter right there.

“I think you mentioned it in an interview once.”

“So you _do_ watch my shows!” She crows, reaching out to touch the back of his hand, thumb stroking his knuckles. “And here I thought you weren’t interested in me at all.”

 _Oh no_ , he thinks, feeling his stomach clench. There’s the ache again. The want.

She’s always been so, so touch-starved, so tactile, but he’s the opposite of it, reserved. He knows it from all those times she’s hooked her arm around her manager without much thought, or how she laces her fingers with Wonwoo sometimes when they’re both playing around for the cameras. She’ll cling to the coordi noonas and stick even closer when they complain, and she’ll let Soonyoung climb into bed with her like they’ve been living together for a long time. Everything that’s easy for her are things Jihoon has to ease himself into over time, and even if Seungcheol jokes around about how today will end, Jihoon knows it’s only him that will make things awkward.

 _I always watch you_ , he thinks. His mouth feels like it’s full of pebbles. _You make it very hard to look away._

He doesn’t say anything, though; he just lets her fill the gaps with her chatter. A part of him wonders if she’s offended by his silence, but her hand stays over his with the lightest of touches, like she’s waiting for him to move or keep still. The choice he makes comes to him as easily as breathing.

He clenches his other hand into a fist and doesn’t pull away. He turns his hand over, letting her fingers rest against his open palm, shy, but gentle.

It’s a reply enough for the two of them.

 

 

“You know, for the longest time, I could have sworn you didn’t like me,” she says, quietly, when they’re in the corner of the cat café, a little away from the other patrons. The hood of her jacket and a pair of oversized sunglasses cover most of her face, but he can still imagine the crinkle of her eyes, the soft planes of her face as she looks at him. “I’m glad that isn’t true.”

He looks at the kitten dozing in her arms, tired out from trying to claw at the slashed holes on Junhui’s jeans and failing. The open seam along the inside of her thigh’s been distracting him ever since she’d plopped them both down on the floor and abandoned their drinks and belongings on the nearby table. He’s trying not to be hyper focused on it. Really, he’s not.

“I don’t like you.” He says, voice rough from disuse, from embarrassment, from want— it’s everything and nothing. He just wants to kiss her, now.

She looks taken aback, hurt flashing in her face before it smoothens out into a blank look. Before she can say anything, though, he continues. 

“I think I love you,” he confesses. “I think about it a lot.”

Her shoulders relax at his words, and she motions for him to scoot closer to her. She looks around the café once, twice, making sure no one’s looking at them. When she’s satisfied, she reaches over to curl her fingers against the front of his shirt, clutching at the cloth as she kisses him, soft, and slow. Languid. Like they have all the time in the world, even when they don’t.

He’s starting to find more similarities than differences between them, now. How the right words are harder to verbalize, or how they’d rather have long stretches of quiet than nervous energy filling the need to speak. How her need for touch isn’t foreign to him now, when he wants to return the favor. Or how, when she looks at him like she wants to kiss him, he thinks he looks the same way too.

“Are you free on the fourteenth?” He asks her when they pull apart, sounding breathless.

“For you?” She says, with a laugh. “Always.”

 

 

_How’d it go?_  
_Did you luck out? Are you two still together right now?_  
_You better be busy making out with her if you’re ignoring my texts._  
_Jihoon?_

 

 

“Get up.”

A punch to his shoulder is what wakes Jihoon up from his sleep. He groans, tugging at his comforter to protect him from the intruder, but sleep deprivation and exhaustion make his movements more sluggish, uncoordinated.

“ _What_?” He demands, not even bothering to open his eyes. There’s only one person with a key that wouldn’t hesitate to use brute force to get her way, and it’s Soonyoung. “Leave me alone. I don’t need to come in to work until this afternoon.”

“Seungcheol-oppa sent me to check up on you,” she says, curtly. “He was having a mild panic attack wondering if you were dead yet. You haven’t been replying to his texts.”

“I’m _busy_.”

“Busy with what? Moping like a loser?”

“Why would I be moping?”

“Well, what are we supposed to think? You go on a mystery date with someone none of you assholes even want to introduce to me, and then you disappear off the face of the earth for _two weeks_ ,” she huffs. He can feel her climb into bed with him, elbows digging into his side as she looms over him threateningly. “Who’s the unlucky lady?”

“Who says there’s even anyone?”

“You’re a shitty liar and I can smell it on you, Lee Jihoon,” she warns him, shaking him by the shoulders. Or, at least, what she thinks are his shoulders. She misses and digs her fingernails into his arms instead. “I’ll find out who it is, just you wait!”

“Good luck,” Jihoon grunts. If he lays on the floor long enough, maybe she’ll get tired of nagging and go away.

His shoulder still twinges from the pain, but it’s not the good kind of ache he’s been privy to ever since he’s started dating Junhui in secret for the past few weeks. They’ve been spending more and more time over at each other’s places lately, skipping the parking lot dates and the discreet hovering around each other at work in favor of more productive activities and creative uses of their time. If Soonyoung had ambushed him any earlier than nine in the morning, she probably would have been scarred for life watching Jihoon live out the stuff of his teenage fantasies on a vertical surface other than his childhood bed; she had to slip out at five so she could go back to her apartment and pack for a shoot out of town.

Not even a city away from him, and already he misses her. When he thinks about all the time he’s wasted longing for her, he just wants to hit himself upside the head and maybe never forgive past-him for being an idiot. It’s done now, though— he doesn’t have to feel guilty about liking her anymore.

Just the thought of it is enough to put a giddy smile to his face; he touches his lips with his fingers, thinking of how her mouth lingered on his when she’d kissed him goodbye at dawn. He closes his eyes and tries to remember the shape of her lips. Her tongue. Her teeth. How it had been so easy to sink into her, it had taken him an hour or more to fall back asleep.

“Oh my god,” Soonyoung yells from the bathroom, garbled but loud enough to jar him out of his thoughts. “Why is there someone’s bra in your laundry hamper? Have you been _sleeping_ with someone? Jihoonie, what about my plans for you to get with Junhui!”

Intent on ignoring her, Jihoon tucks his face back into the pillows, breathing in the scent of something floral in the sheets. A strand of hair longer than his own remains unnoticed against the stark-white beddings, all his to keep.

Maybe he’ll keep it a secret a little longer. Maybe.

 

 

When she’s calmed down enough with brunch and an hour of window shopping at the nearest mall, Soonyoung finally stops calling him a traitorous dick and starts digging for details like the gossipmonger she really is.

“So,” says Soonyoung, nudging his arm with her shoulder as they go around looking for White Day gifts, “are we gonna talk about your secret girlfriend now?”

“No,” says Jihoon. He eyes her critically and waits for her to take a sip of her iced coffee before speaking again. “Are _we_ gonna talk about your little prank on me and Junhui?”

She almost spews coffee all over the front of her shirt, but she valiantly tries to mask the blind panic in her face at being caught. “What prank?” She asks, clearly flustered, and he rolls his eyes. She really is the worst liar in the world.

“I know you bought me the cupcakes and pretended it was Jun,” says Jihoon, calmly handing her some wet wipes to dab at her mess. “Very cheesy love note, by the way. Almost had me convinced it was Junhui, until I saw all the baking stuff in your kitchen and started putting two and two together.”

“I could have been taking a baking class,” she points out, sullenly.

“But you’re not,” he retorts, arms crossed over his chest. “Who’d you get to help you? Wonwoo? How’d you two not burn down your apartment?”

“Fine, you caught me,” she huffs. “We ended up burning everything and bought cupcakes from a hipster bakery Wonwoo’s been obsessed with lately. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“I’m a genius,” he says, loftily.

“Whatever you say, Mr. I-almost-failed-college-calculus,” she sneers. She looks at the list he’s drawn up on her phone, eyebrows furrowed. “Why are you getting Junnie a gift again when you’re dating someone now? Isn’t that stepping on someone’s toes?”

Not if they’re the same person, but he’s having too much fun at her expense to give it away. “It’s platonic,” he insists.

“Platonic, my ass,” Soonyoung snorts. “Royce and Godiva are _never_ platonic White Day gifts, especially if she technically never got you anything.”

“Well, you gave both of us a headache,” he reasons. “You should be buying _us_ stuff in compensation instead.”

“Isn’t being dragged around stores with you torture enough?”

“You’re right. I could have just gotten you to do it from scratch just to spite you.”

“Do you want the love of your life to die of food poisoning?”

“I’ll give it to Wonwoo instead.”

“Can’t believe I call Junhui the love of your life and _this_ is your key takeaway,” Soonyoung mutters under her breath. She huffs and pockets her phone. “Just wait until I meet your new girlfriend face-to-face. I’ll tell her _all_ about how much pining you do behind her back.”

“Go for it,” says Jihoon, shrugging. “I don’t mind.”

She shakes her head at him, sighing. “You are officially the worst boyfriend ever, Lee Jihoon.”

 

 

Against his better judgment, Jihoon ends up getting more boxes of chocolate than he really needs to. He’d bought Soonyoung a carton too, just to get her to stop whining about possibly not getting any from _anyone_ this year, even though Wonwoo’s been giving her not-pity gifts for as long as he’s known her. Best not to remind her of it— anything involving him is a dangerous can of worms.

A part of him briefly wonders if it’s going to get Junhui in trouble with her diet, but she assures him it’s okay. And when he remains unconvinced, she gives him a kiss in between every bite, cooing at him about how he’s the cutest, best boyfriend in the world, and she’d rather slog through an extra half-hour in her workout than not appreciate his thoughtfulness. Suck on that, Kwon Soonyoung.

Speaking of which— he pulls himself away from the soft, teasing nibble of Junhui’s teeth on his lower lip, steeling himself against the jut of her lower lip in mild disappointment.

“Do you think we should tell Soonyoung we’re actually already dating instead of sneaking around?” Jihoon wonders.

“I dunno,” says Junhui, crinkly-eyed even as her eyes are dark with promise. She gives him a soft peck that turns into kittenish licks between the seam of his lips, as heady and dizzying as her fingers toying with the button of his pants. “I think I’ll keep you all to myself for a bit longer.”

They don’t need to talk much after that.


End file.
